This Liberation Day St John volunteers delivered more than 140 food parcels to people around Guernsey.

The parcels containing items like coffee, tea, hot chocolate, biscuits and tins were donated by members of the public, packed into shoeboxes and wrapped in brown paper to look similar to the parcels that were delivered to islanders towards the end of the war when supplies on the island were scarce. Those original food parcels, which started arriving in December 1944 on the Red Cross ship Vega, were stored and distributed by members of the St John Ambulance Brigade.

One recipient emailed us to say “Thank you very much to St John for my parcel which has just arrived. I am very grateful. Kind regards to all concerned.”

Another wrote of Facebook “Sincere thanks to all concerned for their kind thoughts, donations and to all the volunteers who gave up their time both before and on Liberation Day itself. Bless you all.”

Mike Brown, who was a child during the Occupation of Guernsey visited the St John HQ to say a personal thank you for his food parcel. Mike said it brought back memories of receiving sweets from the Liberating forces on 9th May 1945 (pictured below).

The original idea for the food parcels came from Kim Marquis, who enlisted the help of the Guernsey public to donate the items for isolated islanders during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. Following the success of the project last year Kim and St John worked together to run the scheme again in 2021.

A consignment of parcels were also sent by boat to Sark on 10th May, which is Sark’s Liberation Day.